Night Watch: DUBAI – Debka reports that for the past two weeks Iranian freighters have been unloading arms for Hezbollah at two Syrian ports, Tartus and Latakia. This is beyond the range of the UN – European naval force off Lebanon. Small vessels have been arriving at these ports and then embark for Lebanon carrying supplies for Hezbollah. No effort is ever made by the European warships to prevent them from arriving. The UN agreement has permitted the European naval force to be allowed no closer than 7 miles from Lebanon’s coast. They watch for large freighters but again never make any attempt to prevent the smaller craft from running supplies to Hezbollah. Because the EU force is so far from the coast they also failed to prevent 3 Lebanese-Syrian freighters from leaving the northern Lebanon port of Tripoli and sailing close to the coast arriving at Sidon to unload supplies for Hezbollah. [DEBKA]

Airport security is just as lax and negligent. On Friday Tehran tested the end of the air blockade by sending a commercial flight from Dubai loaded with equipment for Hezbollah that were in arms crates listed as “computer equipment. Handle with care.” They were offloaded onto trucks for a convoy to Hezbollah’s headquarters in Baalbek. Agreements made between Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Berlin has allowed 5 German monitors at Beirut International but they are idle since they have not been permitted to set up their checkpoints any closer than a half mile (1km) from the airport. Tehran has therefore sent a lot of commercial flights from Persian Gulf states full of arms crates for Hezbollah with no chance of them being intercepted since it is easy for truck convoys to leave Beirut International using alternate routes circumventing the check points.

This porous situation is a microcosm of how ineffective sanctions against Iran’s nuclear weapons program would be. With so much corruption, collusion, coupled with every day ordinary inefficiency, it would be impossible for sanctions to have any impact. This is the greatest foreign policy illusion Europe and the United Nations have ever gotten involved in.

By land-sea-air Tehran is refreshing Hezbollah’s depleted stockpile of anti-tank missiles and for the first time is shipping large quantities of anti-air missiles as well. This is obvious preparation for the next round of fighting that is intended to be more devastating than the first and will involve more than just Israel/Hezbollah. Syria-Iran will also enter it, fanning the flames of more Islamic radicalism, which they intend to direct and with the complete blessing of the House of Saud along with the Persian Gulf states that are allowing commercial flights from their airports to Beirut loaded with arms for Hezbollah. It could begin shortly after Iran completes its five week wargames that are due to end in two weeks time. Unless Israel decides to set it off sooner by attacking these flagrant violations of UN brokered monitoring agreements that have more holes than a sieve and are an obvious threat to Israel’s existence and regional security. The next round will definitely see the dramatic increase in the price of a barrel of oil the industrialized world has been fearing.

This unprofessional and sinister situation is a mockery of the United Nations itself, actually quite childish and amateurish. Nothing more than a military parade in the name of stability and peace. It is a diplomatic, hypocritical pretense as the European establishments privately like to see wars in the region to make it more unstable and easier to manipulate. But this is 2006 not 1956. This demented, convoluted policy is not unlike their schemes in the former Yugoslavia in the name of the New World Order, so here is their New World Order for Lebanon that they assume they can orchestrate but in reality they are being used by Tehran to set the stage for more chaos in West Asia. But what Europe ignorantly-arrogantly fails to realize is that Tehran intends for the next round to engulf Europe also. The forces Europe has commited will find themselves in a trap not unlike the one the lost alliance of London-Washington have been fighting their way into for the past 3 years. This is Tehran’s response for Europe’s interference in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

On land the situation is the same. With no serious international monitoring presence on the Lebanon-Syrian border Tehran is able to send 3-4 truck arms convoys a day into Lebanon. There is no disruption whatsoever of Tehran’s foreign policy and war preparation timetable. A foreign policy that revolves around crisis creation, something that Tehran has always found strengthening, to provide Iran its excuse to launch whatever missiles and warheads they have developed for the past 20 years. The only question is how many and how accurate.

Willard Payne is an international affairs analyst who specializes in International Relations. A graduate of Western Illinois University with a concentration in East-West Trade and East-West Industrial Cooperation, he has been providing incisive analysis to NewsBlaze. He is the author of Imagery: The Day Before.